Recently, poultry keeping in accordance with an aviary system has spread at the expense of the more traditional battery hen system. With the aviary system, the poultry move freely in a large shed or enclosure where the poultry has a litter base for scraping and perches so that they may freely move around the shed. By these perches there are feed troughs and drinking means within reach of the perches and, nests are provided for the laying. All of the equipment in the shed or enclosure must, of course, be available in a number corresponding to the number of poultry being accommodated.
Generally, the laying nests are arranged in rows next to each other and, possibly in tiers, and a conveyor means, in the form of a conveyor belt, extends at each tier along a length of all of the laying nests for enabling a systematic collecting of the eggs.
In, for example, Danish Patent Application 4831/86 a laying nest system is proposed wherein each nest has an inclining nest bottom so that the laid eggs will automatically roll toward a rear wall of nest, pass through an opening therein and roll down onto a conveyor belt for immediate conveyance. While this proposed system functions excellently in practice, a disadvantage thereof resides in the fact that, since the nest area itself in each nest box only makes up about two thirds of the area occupied by the nest box, considerable wasted space is created since the hens will of course not be permitted access to the conveyor belt and the eggs thereon.
Generally, in proposed constructions, the nest bottom is divided into at least two parts with at least one of the parts being inclined and arranged higher with respect to the remainder to the bottom of the nest thereby creating a slit or opening in a center area of the nest bottom to permit a passage of the eggs therethrough.